At today's close of 81 Yen/$, the Yen has now declined about 2% from its average closing value for 2011. I understand that the company has purchased production forward at a fixed (higher) Yen value for the first few months of 2012, but all else equal this decline should result in a 1 percentage-point improvement in gross margin for SNDK. This is according to the function Judy Bruner provided on the recent conference call:

They said that they hedged about half of their wafers, although I am not certain if that applies to all of 2012 or only to Q1 or H1. Hard to believe that they actually knew in Q4 how many wafers they would be purchasing for all of 2012. If anyone is going to the MS conference (or if Atif reads this!), maybe someone could ask them for more specifics on this.

"We have locked in approximately 60% of our yen requirements for 2012, and based on the cost of those contracts, as well as current market rates, we forecast an approximately 5% increase in the dollar cost of our yen-based wafer purchases."

Well, that was the prudent thing to do, since no one could know where the yen would bottom. Heck, we still don't really know that it has bottomed, even though fundamentally it seems like it should. But it has seemed that way for a long time now.

I'm not disagreeing with you Sam. Just trying to add some clarity to the discussion. Hedging costs money. The Barcelona Mobile Show is starting so we'll hear of many new mobile devices, all presumably using NAND. I think someone posted this piece earlier, but I just got around to reading it:

SanDisk Setting Up For Positive Surprises While we have a favorable view on shares, we have one fairly meaningful concern. We were surprised by how emphatic management was about pushing out Fab 5. Historically, former CEO and co-founder Eli Harari spoke tirelessly about the price elasticity of NAND. Lower prices spurred adoption and opened new markets, and also shifted consumers to using higher capacities (ie a 4GB card instead of a 2GB card). If capacity came on too soon, it would result in a weak period followed by an explosive period. Perhaps we are reading too much into it, and SanDisk is merely timing the market. It's just somewhat strange that SanDisk wouldn't be prepared with more internal capacity in front of an "inflection point" for SSDs.

This is something we'll monitor closely. Nonetheless, with shares at current levels, we believe the risk/reward is too compelling not to own.

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK - News), a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced it is working with key industry chipset vendors to help ensure a best-in-class user experience for mobile devices based on Microsoft Corp.’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system.

Companies such as Intel Corporation, Qualcomm Incorporated and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) are using SanDisk iNAND Extreme™ embedded flash memory with some of their top Windows 8 hardware development platforms. SanDisk is working with these companies to optimize its iNAND Extreme flash memory products with Windows 8-based tablet and mobile designs.

“SanDisk is known for its deep technical expertise and has strong relationships with all major mobile handset and tablet manufacturers, mobile chipset vendors, operating system developers and standardization bodies,” said Dan Inbar, SanDisk senior vice president and general manager, OEM. “Because of the effort we make to continually drive innovation and foster stronger relationships with industry partners, we’re well positioned to extend our status as a leading provider of storage solutions to Windows 8-based systems.”

SanDisk iNAND Extreme is the company’s highest-performance e.MMC (embedded multi-media card) solution with up to 50MB* per second write and 80MB* per second read performance, along with very high speed random performance. SanDisk iNAND Extreme is optimized to improve system responsiveness and multitasking performance, as well as the browsing experience of Windows 8-based devices. iNAND Extreme is currently sampling to customers in 16GB to 64GB** capacities and is expected to be available in the second quarter.

“Qualcomm selected SanDisk’s iNAND Extreme technology for some of its Snapdragon™ S4-based reference design platforms running Windows 8 because Qualcomm wants to offer a best-in-class mobile user experience, including a high quality visual experience and high processing performance,” said Raj Talluri, vice president of product management, Qualcomm.

As smartphones, tablets and other consumer electronics devices become more complex it is increasingly important that all aspects of hardware and software design work together efficiently. Particularly with the introduction of new operating systems and more advanced applications, the need for tight integration between hardware and software is essential. SanDisk works with the entire ecosystem of hardware and software vendors to ensure its flash memory chips are optimized to help improve efficiency and deliver a better user experience.

As a result of this commitment to delivering a better mobile experience, SanDisk is deeply engaged with many other companies in the industry. This teamwork is on display this week at the SanDisk booth partner pavilion at Mobile World Congress located in Hall 8, booth number 8B91.

SanDisk Mobile Memory Leadership Products

As smaller, more powerful mobile devices have proliferated throughout the consumer electronics market, the use of flash memory has expanded from mobile phones and tablets to enable new products and new usage models. The SanDisk iNAND product family includes an embedded storage solution for every performance segment and capacity point in the mobile market including smartphones, tablets and consumer electronics. The SanDisk iNAND family includes iNAND*™, iNAND Ultra™ and iNAND Extreme products and includes SanDisk’s industry leading two and three-bit-per-cell NAND flash memory technology.

“SanDisk works to ensure its NAND flash memory products are tightly integrated with products from all major chipset vendors and mobile operating system developers to ensure the best possible mobile user experience,” said Yoram Zylberberg, senior director, Embedded Memory Business. “Focusing on tight integration with the mobile community and standards bodies helps produce an optimized mobile solution. As a result, iNAND™ embedded flash memory is included on a majority of leading mobile chipset reference designs and is the reason why we have such great support from our industry partners here at Mobile World Congress.”

More information about SanDisk’s work with partners to enhance full system mobile performance is available at Mobile World Congress Hall 8, booth number 8B91.

SanDisk has developed its embedded product line to meet the diverse needs of end users in the mobile handset, tablet and consumer electronics segments. The company’s iNAND embedded flash memory technology is incorporated into many leading smartphone and consumer electronics products, while its iNAND Ultra™ products are built into devices from the makers of most major smartphones. In addition, high-performance iNAND Extreme™ embedded flash memory technology is currently being tested on all major Windows 8 development platforms – including Windows 8 and Windows Phone (see companion news release also issued today).

“The work SanDisk does to understand actual usage scenarios contributes to a better user experience,” said Mike Rayfield, GM mobile business unit of NVIDIA. “When combined with our processors and chipsets, this knowledge is invaluable to driving innovation in mobile devices.”

SanDisk’s work to deliver best-in-class performance for end users in the mobile segment also extends to its removable microSD™ card products, SSDs used in mobile and enterprise computing and other products sold through its OEM and retail sales channels.

“As we witness the explosion of bandwidth available to mobile devices, and the greater role played by the cloud in delivering an increasing amount of data to these devices, reliable flash memory is becoming an even more fundamental parameter to any mobile platform experience,” said Fred Cohen, director, OMAP™ platform ecosystem, TI. “However, SanDisk does more than deliver the fundamentals. It complements our OMAP platform’s smart multicore architecture with NAND flash memory that enhances low-latency performance in multimedia scenarios, a critical feature to mobile device applications.”

The SanDisk Extreme SSD is surprising in a many ways. Just when we thought we had seen the top of what the SF-2281 SSDs are capable of, SanDisk unleashes the Extreme SSD with a unique NAND configuration and firmware that delivered impressive numbers. The results in several areas are astounding, with 4K random write speeds topping 88,324 IOPS and the Extreme posted the top scores in our HTPC and Gaming real world benchmarks, if only by a hair. What really knocked our socks off though are the 4K QD1 random reads of 8,144 IOPS, beating the Intel SSD 520 by 7% and the OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS by 28%. This is largely thanks to SanDisk's own MLC Toggle NAND.

The Extreme SSD also accomplishes another major feat - price. Historically new entrants to the SSD space hold prices high, until enough volume and distribution drives costs down. SanDisk skipped that entire dance, coming to the street with prices that are substantially lower than the Intel SSD 520 and Vertex 3 Max IOPS.

Overall we were very impressed by the performance of the SanDisk Extreme SSD. It didn't offer the fastest performance in every category, but it was able to snag the top spot in plenty of our tests. To come in with that level of performance just as the SandForce market was starting mature is impressive to say the least.

The SanDisk Extreme SSD boasts some of the fastest speeds we have recorded for a client SSD, with exceptionally strong 4K random read and random write speeds. SanDisk delivers a mighty trifecta to consumers with the Extreme SSD - class leading performance, support and pricing.